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Former DoubleClick Exec Named Privacy Czar
tsu doh nimh writes "A former executive for banner ad giant DoubleClick has been selected to be the first ever privacy czar for the Department of Homeland Security, says this Washingtonpost.com story." Just leaves you speechless ....
Will we start getting Homeland Security updates through banner ads? Will popup banner ads now be government endorsed? ;-)
Surely they could find someone with a better resume than that? Surely?
In a related move Osama Bin Laden has been appointed as the
first ever Terror Czar. Bin Laden was not immediately available
for comment.
From the article it sounds like this post will be more of a
public relations position than anything. Rather than appointing
someone who worked for a company notorious for trampling
people's privacy rights, IMO they should have appointed someone
who has a record of protecting an upholding our right to
privacy. Had they appointed someone with that type of track
record maybe the cabinet could have had an honest dialogue about
privacy rights in general, rather than simply a discussion about
how to phrase the wording of a news release so it doesn't freak
out the privacy rights groups.
Doug Tolton
"The destruction of a value which is, will not bring value to that which isn't." -John Galt
This whole presidency is like opposite day.
O'Connor Kelly came in after DoubleClick was shown to be, well, evil when it came to privacy, to clean things up. Many changes have occured at DoubleClick to fix some of the problems. Given the amount of data DoubleClick had and what they did with it, O'Connor Kelly should have an excellent idea of what abuses you can do when you have that sort of information.
Hopefully she can step in and help prevent that sort of thing from happening at this level too.
Shouldn't this be "from the-foxes-guarding-the-henhouse dept." -- ?
Click on this banner for information on protecting your privacy!
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
... or like hiring Kevin Mitnick as a security
consultant - ha ha. Oh wait that's not a joke.
Before the huge storm of criticism starts, let's ask ourselves:
How would this be different from hiring Kevin Mitnick to handle security issues?
The we like Kevin Mitnick more than we like ad agencies is not sufficient grounds for an objection. What I want to know is, why shouldn't we hire knowledgable people away from doing what we don't want, and into doing what we do want?
Philip Sandifer's academic website
From the article:
Why would this leave you any more speechless than hiring Kevin Mitnick to do security for a large corporation?
Get some balance in your outlook.
John.
From the article:
"She joined DoubleClick in February 2000 after the Federal Trade Commission launched an investigation into complaints that the company was improperly storing and sharing private user data. DoubleClick also was embroiled in similar investigations by 12 state attorneys general and several class-action lawsuits.
DoubleClick settled most of those lawsuits, and created a division specializing in privacy compliance, which O'Connor Kelly ran. "
Sounds to me like some changes were make by O'Connor Kelly and privacy was improved. I'd say it takes a pretty strong person to go into a company as deep in it as Double Click and improve it.
----- "Blame the guy who doesn't speak English." -- Homer J. Simpson
Thanks for answers!
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
Even the title of Privacy Czar for the Homeland Security department seems oxymoronic. Isn't the direction the USA is taking with Homeland Security towards giving up your privacy rights, with all these new laws passed?
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
Once again, we have another /. double standard. How many times have I watched people here applaud when a former cracker gets appointed to a top position in security?
But God Forbid someone who knows the ins and outs of privacy abuses, a person who would know BEST how to protect against them, gets the chance to do so. They're evil and will always be evil!
In the cutting and pasting, the submitter clipped an important word from the opening paragraph...
"The former privacy officer of Internet advertising giant DoubleClick will be the Department of Homeland Security's first privacy czar, Bush administration officials said. "
Yes, she once worked for DoubleClick, but she only started AFTER the FTC sited them for privacy abuses. So she went in, cleaned them up, settled their lawsuits, and moved on. She now works for the Department of Commerce.
So, she ran the privacy clean-up for DoubleClick, and now she's picked to do the same thing, monitoring privacy for the government's latest fad, Homeland Security. Is this a problem? Or is it only a problem because she was picked by a conservative?
"Consensus" is what got us into the current privacy mess! The current "compromise" on most personal financial data is that data holders have to tell you what their sharing policy is (in dense legalese text which usually has "we will share with basically anybody who will pay us for it" buried in it) and give you the chance to "opt out".
If the regulations had been made with consumers in mind at all, the default would have been to not share data and to only allow sharing when people opt-in. This would make private data a liability rather than an asset.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
I think the reason why she was chosen is because she knows how to tread the line between legal privacy and illegal privacy. However, this is not what I would want in my government. Because it means, yet again I cannot trust the government....
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Yeah, what's next, putting a former government official convicted of violating the Constitution in charge of spying on US citizens?
My actual worry is that this will be nothing more than an "honorary" posting; something that Ashcroft can point to and say "See? We've got someone working on privacy issues," while carefully not pointing out that she's not allowed to actually do anything about privacy protection. Although, the mention that the "Total Information Awareness" program has been - at least temporarily - derailed has me breathing a little easier.
Of course, if it does come down to a worse-case scenario, I'm going to have to unblock DoubleClick's cookies, or I'll be in big trouble!
Doing my level best to piss off the religious right wing...
At least "the Hedgehog" wouldn't tell poor people with 10 kids in countries with 40% HIV infection that using condoms is a sin.
Freedom: "I won't!"
I'm really glad I read the article on this post, because after only reading the slashdot version I had a very different opinion on the matter than I do now!
__
Choose mnemonic identifiers. If you can't remember what mnemonic means, you've got a problem. - Larry Wall
Bill Gates named Open Source Czar, Jack Valenti named VP of Consumer Fair-Use, and John Wayne Gacy named Director of Child-Protective Services.
the best rapper is white
the best golfer is black
the tallest NBA player is chinese
the swiss hold the america's cup
france is accusing the u.s. of arrogance
germany doesn't want to go to war
and the three most powerful men in america are named "bush", "dick", and "colon".
Who says Americans don't have a sense of irony.
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
I read the exact same paragraph and it *confirmed* my concerns.
Look at this in perspective: DoubleClick is a huge organization that is having serious problems with lawsuits because it's trampling all over people's privacy. They bring in O'Connor Kelly, who does a good job settling *most* of the lawsuits (note: settling != defeating) and starts a new division to help keep DoubleClick safe from future lawsuits. DoubleClick continues to do as much data-mining and collection as it possibly can (because that's STILL the core of its business) but now it avoids most of the unpleasant and costly public lawsuits.
Now substitute "the US Govt" for "DoubleClick". Fits pretty well, doesn't it? It doesn't sound *too* bad... until you consider that they're still planning on doing as much privacy invasion as they can possibly get away with... she'll just help them walk that wavy line.
Think about the difference if the new privacy advisor were, say, one of the "12 state attorneys general" who were prosecuting DoubleClick, or someone involved in the "several class-action lawsuits" from the other side. Or ANYONE who had privacy advocacy experience from the victims' side.
There are only 10 types of people: those who understand decimal, those who don't, and, uh, 8 other types I forget.
..naming James Watt as secretary of the interior. Oh wait, that's been done. how about...
..having Kissinger head a probe about Intelligence failures. Oh yeah. Ok, let's try
..having John Ashcroft head the Deparment of Justice.
Ok, that's it. I give up.
This is a perfect example of what's known as "the revolving door" between industry and government. Traditionally, the big problems have been in the defense and heavy construction industries, so many computer people probably don't understand it.
Here's how it goes -- an industry bigwig is selected for a regulatory post because of "expertise" in a certain area. After all, they have all this experience, and have risen to prominence, so they must be well-qualified, no? They work for the government for awhile. They make contacts. And if they "play ball" while in their government position, they get a great job offers from private industry when their term expires. Sometimes these offers are innocent and genuine, but sometimes they're outrageous, obvious, and blatant rewards for having done someone's bidding while in office. And there's every shade of gray in between.
As I mentioned, the most common industry for this is heavy construction. It's most common at the local level -- particularly with construction managers who work as city/county inspectors, and then construction managers, or consultants, again. This is actually illegal in many places, but there are many ways to get around the letter of the law -- shell companies, etc. Sometimes it's so bad that when an inspector gets fired for obvious, intentional lack of diligence, he shows up the very next day on the same jobsite, on the contractor's payroll, making three times what the position would normally pay -- thumbing his nose at his former bosses. Nice "reward," eh, without having to take an actual bribe!
Of course, construction is an extreme example, being a somwhat bare-knuckle industry anyway. But the same conflict of interest exists everywhere else. And no matter how subtle the conflict of interest may be, the effects of it are felt by us all, and our society suffers.
Other areas of our society which could be very easily ruined by such conflict of interest are adversarial by design. Our courts, for example -- lawyers don't flip-flop between representing one side then the other. Good journalists aren't supposed to get too chummy with the people they're reporting on. Economist Milton Friedman has often commented on staying out of industry, worrying that it might corrupt his science, or give the appearance of doing so. Likwise, regulators should maintain the same distance from the industries they're regulating.
Presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer announced today that President Bush has, after consulting with VP Dick Cheney, other members of his cabinet and unidentified experts from the poultry industry that The Fox would be put in charge of The Henhouse.
"We think The Fox will lend invaluable experience to the management of The Henhouse," said Fleischer. "He has decades of experience with both eggs and with chickens, a breadth of experience that most other candidates just don't have."
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Is anyone else concerned about the increasing number of government sanctioned Czars in America? At what point did we become a Czarist nation?